by Emme Setter

Created on: May 07, 2009   Last Updated: June 25, 2009

It's not a pretty picture. A trailer driving down a texas highway, 60 horses crammed in, no stops for water, no stops to stretch legs, no breeze, no food, just hours of a seemingly endless journey. Auction horses show up on the East Coast dehydrated, sick and absolutely miserable. Whatever memories of kindness and clean bedding they may have clung too are long since faded into the background of grime and disease. Any horses not in the auction trailer are doomed to bake in the sun with little to no shelter, and far to many horses per acre.

Auction horse come from a variety of different situations. Loving homes that have no other option in this economy, foreclosed 'breeding programs' that over produced poorly bred stock horses worth nothing but their weight in meat, failed 'projects' bought by backyard trainers; ruined and resold. If they weren't underweight when they left their previous home, they are now. If they aren'tsick yet, they will be. When they finally run through auction, what has not died may as well have- the meat buyer is the only guy with money to spend on half dead horses.

In the name of animal protection, we have let horses suffer for weeks, months even, in grimy pens with moldy hay and inadequate water. Horse lovers across the nation cry foul when horses are taken to slaughter, bemoan the cruelties of it and surge up to protect the noble horse. A few are rescued from auction They are fattened up and loved and fed, rehabilitated and paraded around as a miracle animal- the one who survived. As this horse sleeps in his warm stall, 80% of the horses he auctioned with have gone to slaughter, or to another dismal pen where someone else will try to turn a buck, giving up and signing off to the slaughter house.

Now, to the heart of it: I am PRO slaughter. Slaughter is an ugly word, it brings to mind butchers with axes and A Day No Pig Would Die, but I can think of something uglier than slaughter, starvation. Everyday, fields of undernourished, uncared for horses suffer without shelter or attention. They cannot be turned free. No body wants to buy them and there are not enough shelters to take them in. What do we do with them? If anti-slaughter supporters had their way, we would do nothing. We would keep them in that feild, complain about the over breeders and throw up our hands in frustration.

If I had my way:

Slaughter houses, and horse auctions would be taxed on purchases and sales. The profits made from these taxes would go to the creation of funded Horse Rescues. The horse rescues, which acknowledging not every animal can be saved would focus on horses that truly can be rehabilitated, work to identify uneducated and irresponsible trainers, barns that routinely 'throw away' racehorses and bad horse brokers and fine them appropriately, and bring animal cruelty charges against them when necessary.

Horses are noble animals, they provide invaluable services to man deserve more than rotting in a field, forgotten. Slaughter is not pretty, but it is better than watching a once beautiful horse and lively horse, now forgotten wither away and eventually die from neglect.

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